


Thalia Grace’s Foolproof Guide To Punching Luke Castellan In The Face

by melimarron



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alex Fierro Cameo, Alternate Universe- Time Travel, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Annabeth Chase, BAMF Thalia Grace, Character Death, Character Undeath, Crack, Crack Taken Seriously, Gen, HA nope, How many times have I used those tags now?, I don’t know how to write crack, I get to have angst and crack in the same fic, My Best Attempts At Crack Anyway, Pure Crack, This is the crackiest thing I’ve ever written and that is kind of sad, Time Travel, even more Thalia Graces than previously advertised, how did tvtropes put it?, kind of, never the selves shall meet?, whoa this is my third time travel story jeez, will update once a week, yeah that’s right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25539526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melimarron/pseuds/melimarron
Summary: Thalia Grace, after centuries of being a Hunter, gets her hands on a time machine.She decides to fix her past with it.Unfortunately, changing the past is harder than it seems.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase & Thalia Grace, Luke Castellan & Annabeth Chase & Thalia Grace, Luke Castellan & Thalia Grace
Comments: 19
Kudos: 53





	1. Confident Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> This is my best attempt at crack, and I am not good at crack.
> 
> This is also a multichapter fic, and I am not good at those either.
> 
> I also haven't read PJO in forever, which pretty much ensures that the characters will be OOC. 
> 
> But if you're here for Thalia Grace fucking up, you've come to the right place.
> 
> Enjoy!

Thalia has three goals when she decides she wants to travel back in time.

Goal Number One: Murder and maybe punch Luke Castellan before he can become Kronos.

Goal Number Two: Keep Annabeth, Jason, Percy, Nico, and every other young demigod who got swept up into Kronos’ and Gaea’s wars safe.

Goal Number Three: Not getting herself turned into a tree, flower, or any kind of plant at all along the way for “her own safety”.

Thalia has, in her opinion, spent way too much time as a plant. Nico had always been complaining about being turned into flowers or corn. The man had  _ nothing _ on Thalia’s plant experience. If she never heard another conversation between dryads about foliage or Pan or the average rainfall in summer, it would be too soon.

But the whole “travel back in time” thing was just something to keep her busy. Just something to think about, hypothetically, when Thalia was on a hunt that she could do in her sleep, or when she wasn’t thinking about how dull life as a Hunter had gotten recently, or when she wasn’t looking at Artemis with weary eyes and wondering how her goddess could stand the monotony of the constant, ever-present hunt.

(Answer: Artemis was  _ literally _ the goddess of the Hunt, and Thalia was, technically, mortal. They were fundamentally different, and that explained everything.)

Artemis notices the signs- of course she did, Thalia wasn’t her first lieutenant and she definitely wasn’t the last- and summons Thalia to her tent with a sad look on her face.

Half an hour later, Thalia’s walking out of the Hunter camp without her symbol of lieutenancy. She still has her coat and her bow, thankfully, so she can defend herself.

She’s free of the Hunters for the first time since she was fifteen-almost-sixteen, and she’s just  _ so tired _ . Tomorrow she will turn sixteen, and what had once been a dreaded birthday has become… well,  _ mundane _ .

Honestly, what she wants to do, more than anything, is to just collapse somewhere and let a monster find and kill her. She’s extremely powerful, due to her centuries of experience as a child of the Big Three, and she’s killed thousands of monsters in the wars and in Artemis’ service. Now that she isn’t being actively protected by Artemis, she should be swamped with monsters. It would be easy to just… die like that.

Besides, she’s  _ old _ now. The only person who knew her before she’d become a Hunter was Chiron. The pine tree at Camp Half Blood had become a legend- the last Thalia had heard, her tree was apparently the burial site of three children of the Big Three, and said children would rise from the dead to defend the camp in its hour of need. She’s ninety percent certain that two of the fabled dead Big Three kids are supposed to be Nico and Percy, even though they aren’t actually buried there, but she doesn’t know if the child of Zeus is supposed to be her or Jason. It could honestly be either of them, considering the tree is still, apparently, called  _ Thalia’s Tree _ , but Thalia herself is definitely still alive and kicking.

It doesn’t matter, she decides. She has more important things to do, like figuring out what she’s going to do with the seventy-odd years she has left to live her life. She can’t spend all seventy of those years correcting old legends, especially when she isn’t totally certain if her own memories of the events that created those legends are reliable or not.

_ If I could go back in time _ , Thalia thinks to herself,  _ I’d spend time with Jason and Annabeth and Reyna and Nico and Percy and everyone _ .

_ But before all that, I would kill Luke before he has the chance to hurt any of them _ .

And just like that, her decision is made, even if it’s a little… well, impossible.

She is going to go back in time, and she is going to kill Luke, and after she does that, Kronos won’t rise, and if Kronos doesn't rise, Kronos won’t fall, and if Kronos doesn’t fall, Gaea won’t try to avenge him, and if Gaea doesn’t try to avenge him, then the second war won’t happen, and if the second war doesn't happen, the Triumvirate won’t rise, and then…

Well, she’s going to start with killing Luke. That seems like the best first step to take.

She is, kind of, maybe, a little bit aware that her desire to kill Luke, hundreds of years after his death, is more than a little unhinged. The guy had nearly ended Western Civilization, but after nine hundred or so years, Thalia has seen and helped defeat so many wannabe destroyers of Western Civilization that  _ he almost ended Western Civilization _ has become a weak defense of her hatred towards him.

Luke  _ was _ a little different, though. The younger Hunters didn’t know that she’d  _ known _ Luke, that she had saved his life and he had saved hers, that they had kept each other and Annabeth safe until they’d reached camp and Thalia had died and everything had gone wrong.

But now she didn’t have her responsibilities holding her back.

Now all she had to do was find a way to actually  _ travel back in time _ .

Kronos, the _Lord_ of Time, was obviously a no-go, on the Greek and Roman sides of things. Thalia wasn’t able to go to Brooklyn and Nome there, mostly due to an incident a few centuries back where the Hunters and the Egyptian magicians had gotten into a little spat and the Hunters had ended up banned from Brooklyn unless they were on a Hunt, and the magicians had gotten banned from Manhattan unless they had specific, Egyptian magician-related business there.

Which meant...

Thalia grins. She knows what to do now.

She needs to go to Boston.

* * *

“Hey, Alex,” Thalia says.

“Oh, gods,” Alex Fierro says. “Not you.”

“I need a favor.”

Alex scowls. “What is it?”

“I need you to let your dad out of his nut.”

“ _ What _ ?”

“I wanna kill Luke.” Thalia decides to leave out the pretty minor fact that Luke has been dead for nine hundred years.

Alex’s mouth is hanging open. “Loki almost destroyed the world! Why would you want to let him out?”

Thalia shrugged. “Good behavior?”

“Oh my  _ gods _ .” Alex turns away. “No.”

Thalia considers using her nine hundred years of experience to manipulate Alex into letting Loki out of the nut, or at least telling her where it is, but then remembers that not only does Alex also have nine hundred years of experience, Alex is the child of the god of lies and tricks, so any manipulation attempts on Thalia’s part would be laughable at best and offensive at worst, so Thalia slinks away from the einherjar’s window with as much dignity as she can muster.

Time for Plan B.

* * *

“Hey,” Thalia says, arms folded outside of the Hephaestus Cabin. “Do you guys take commissions?”

Some weedy little son of Hephaestus glares up at her. He looks like he’s somewhere between eight and twenty years old. Thalia isn’t too great at telling how old people are nowadays, but still. How is this kid the head of the Hephaestus Cabin? Has Hephaestus stopped having kids?

“No,” he says.

“Come on.”

“ _ No _ .”

“I’ve saved Olympus before.”

The boy scoffs. “Not in  _ my _ lifetime.”

Thalia raises an eyebrow. “Does that  _ matter _ ?”

“You could be lying.”

“I’m  _ not _ .”

“Either way, I’m not making anything for you.”

“Why not?”

“ _ Because _ .”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Yeah it is.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“ _ Please _ .”

The boy scowls. “ _ Fine _ ,” he snarls, and turns away just as Thalia pumps her fist in victory. In her day, no child of the gods would be worn down that easily. Kids today.

She follows the boy into the cabin. “Can you guys make time machines?”

The boy spins around. “Uh-”

“Sure,” another kid, a girl, pipes up. “We made one last week.”

“Is it a DeLorean?” Thalia says, ignoring the scornful looks she gets when she uses outdated references. She’s definitely used to it by now, and that movie had been old when she was actually a teenager. “Can I borrow it?”

“ _ No _ !” the boy squawks. “You might hurt it!”

Thalia puts her hand up in the Boy Scout way. The closest group to the Boy Scouts Thalia has ever been in is the Hunters, and she promises herself silently that Artemis is never going to hear about her using the  _ Boy _ Scout salute, even if it’s defunct by now. “I won’t. Scout’s honor.”

The boy squints. “What does that mean?”

“It’s an ancient method of swearing an oath. It’s unbreakable.”

“Like an oath on the Styx?”

“...Yeah,” Thalia says.

The boy nods seriously. “Fine, then.”

Thalia smothers her urge to laugh and holds out her hand. “I won’t break it.”

The girl rummages around in a backpack for a minute, before pulling out a little box. She holds it with a reverent air. “Here. Bring it back in one piece.”

“Scout’s honor,” Thalia says.

* * *

Figuring out how the box works is surprisingly easy.

Thalia appears out of nowhere the night after she and Luke had picked Annabeth up, and it’s probably only her experience as a Hunter that prevents them from noticing her suddenly appearing in the trees above them.

Thalia stifles a curse as she clings to the branch of a tree. It’s been nine hundred years, and she still hates heights. Thalia had been a tree for years, and trees were not meant to leave the ground, even if the tree was a child of the god of the sky. She pushes the time machine into her backpack. She doesn’t want it falling into the wrong hands.

Underneath her, Luke, Thalia, and Annabeth are discussing their supplies seriously. Thalia- the elder Thalia- can’t quite believe that they haven’t noticed her. How tired  _ were _ they? If  _ she _ were leading the monsters, she would have them attack now, when their guard was obviously lowered and the two more experienced demigods weren’t used to defending themselves  _ and _ a seven-year-old.

_ Nope, not going to think about attacking Annabeth. I’m here to keep Annabeth  _ safe _ , not kill her _ .

The amateurishness of her younger self rankles. How had she stayed alive long enough to actually (almost) get to Camp Half-Blood? 

Thalia takes a solid look at Luke’s weapon, and realizes that he does not, in fact,  _ have _ a weapon. She’d completely forgotten- for a solid portion of their journey together, Luke had been armed with an incredibly versatile, but completely normal, golf club. Back then, she had been impressed with his ability to wield the golf club- he’d even managed to dispatch a few monsters with it (or, at least, he’d knocked them unconscious long enough for Thalia to get them with her Celestial Bronze weapon). But now, all Thalia could think was to wonder how in the names of every single god or goddess to ever exist had _any_ of them survived long enough to get to Camp Half-Blood with a _golf club_ as one of their main weapons.

Maybe they had had more godly intervention than Thalia had thought. Up until now, she hadn’t really thought about how inexperienced she had been when she met Luke. She hadn’t thought she was  _ too _ inexperienced, of course- she was literally being hunted by Hades, a whole bunch of monsters, and probably Hera, to be honest, who wanted to kill her for being born. 

But looking at her now, all Thalia can do is critique her younger self.

_ How should I introduce myself to them _ ? Thalia isn’t completely stupid or insane- she remembers how paranoid and on-edge she, Luke, Annabeth, and Grover had been when they were getting to Camp Half-Blood, even if they clearly weren’t paranoid or on-edge enough, if she’s this close to them without them noticing. She remembers the constant monster attacks. If an older version of herself had randomly appeared in the middle of all that, she is certain that said older version of herself would not have survived long enough to explain that she needs to kill Luke for the good of all humanity.

_ Especially _ if the older version of herself looked like she was sixteen years old. Everyone knew the prophecy had something to do with a sixteen year old child of the Big Three, even if the actual contents of the prophecy weren’t common knowledge.

There were definitely shapeshifters out there, too. If Luke or the younger version of Thalia  _ didn’t _ attack her on sight, Thalia would be even more suspicious of them. She’d let them attack her, too- she knew all the tricks her younger self and Luke could pull, and she had quite a few that her younger self couldn’t even dream of.

Hades, all she had to do to throw her younger self off her game was to mention that Jason was still alive.

If mentioning Jason wouldn’t prove that she was a sort-of friendly party, nothing would. Still, Thalia held back. There was no reason to just rush into things. All she had to do was wait for Luke to go off on his own, and then she could slit his throat. Her younger self and Annabeth would be devastated, of course, but Kronos wouldn’t rise, and that was good enough for Thalia.

There was no reason for Thalia to reveal herself to her younger self and her companions at all, in fact. If she had a low profile, maybe if she didn’t kill Luke until the night before they got to camp, just to make sure everyone she wanted to survive the quest  _ would _ survive the quest… then all of her problems would be solved.

Thalia smiles, and tries to ignore the vast amounts of space between herself and the ground.

* * *

In hindsight, Thalia should have planned her little  _ murder Luke _ plan a little better than she did. In her defense, she wasn’t even expecting to get a time machine, but here she is, in the past, with a totally baffled and terrified looking Luke Castellan at her mercy. He has a black eye and a broken nose from some  _ very _ cathartic punching on her end.

She slices across his throat with her knife, and presses a cloth into his mouth with her unoccupied hand, so he can’t scream. She’s using the wind to help press him into the ground, to keep his stupid golf club out of reach, and to distort the muffled shrieks that  _ do _ escape the cloth so that the younger Thalia or Grover or Annabeth don’t come to investigate.

It takes less than a minute for Luke to die.

Thalia gets to her feet, blood dripping from her hands and the front of her shirt. She wipes the knife on Luke’s body, sticks the cloth into her pocket, and prepares to fly off into the trees, her job done.

And, of course,  _ that _ is the exact moment that her younger self walks into the little clearing where Thalia had murdered Luke.

And from that moment forwards, nothing is predictable.

The younger Thalia stares down at the body in horror. The elder Thalia is frozen. She had  _ not _ prepared for this. Maybe she should have spent less time sneering at her younger self’s lack of awareness of her surroundings and more time increasing her  _ own _ awareness of her surroundings.

Then the younger Thalia slowly jerks her gaze away from the probably-still-warm body of her best friend to look the elder Thalia in the eyes.

“It’s for the good of the world,” Thalia tells her younger self. “I’m doing what the gods would want me to do.”

The younger Thalia’s face contorts in rage. “You-”

She comes running for the older Thalia, knife out and fury etched into every inch of her face. Aegis forms on her arm.

The older Thalia takes to the skies, summoning the winds to launch her into the trees, where she can hide. Her younger self doesn’t have the aversion to heights that her older self does- at least, the fear of it isn’t as crippling as it became after her time as a tree- so the height only serves to put some space between Thalia and her younger self. She isn’t safe.

She can only hope that the constant threat of monsters, especially as they get closer and closer to camp, is enough to keep the younger Thalia close to Annabeth and Grover.

* * *

The next day unfolds more-or-less the same way that Thalia remembers it. This day has been seared into her mind, even nine hundred years later. It wasn’t every day that you made a heroic sacrifice and ended up as a plant for your reward.

Of course, everyone was devastated and horrified by Luke’s death- Grover and Annabeth are convinced that the killer was both crazy and mortal, because any sane monster worth their salt would go for Thalia, not Luke, especially if it had a clear shot at her. They blame the whole “the killer looked exactly like an older Thalia” thing on stress, panic, and the darkness of night.

The younger Thalia isn’t so vocal about her grief. It unsettles the older Thalia a little bit, looking into the bitter, angry eyes of her counterpart. It reminds her of Luke, horribly.

But Luke’s death doesn’t change what happens next.

The monsters catch up to them in a group so large that there is no way the younger Thalia, Annabeth, and Grover can fight them all off, even with the older Thalia helping them.

The older Thalia has been slashing away at the confused monsters on the edges of the pack, who seem to believe that she’s her younger self’s more dangerous twin, and is therefore also a child of Zeus. They’re half-right, amusingly. She loses track of time, and then all of a sudden, The Tree grows from nothing.

Well, not from nothing- from Thalia’s own mostly-dead body.

The monsters slam into the barrier and are unable to get across. The living Thalia grins to herself and summons the wind.

The first step towards Making The World A Better Place By Killing Luke And Neutralizing Kronos is complete.

Now all she has to do is get rid of Kronos himself.


	2. Everything Goes Wrong, In Slow Motion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Good news: Luke is dead.
> 
> Bad news: Kronos is not.

Everything is going smoothly, in Thalia’s opinion. Annabeth has survived to twelve years old, Luke is still dead, Kronos is still dead, and Grover and Chiron have been sent to protect one Perseus “Percy” Jackson at his middle school in Manhattan.

If things continue to go on as they have, Thalia’s considering heading to California and New Rome, to check up on Jason.

And then she hears Malcom talking to another child of Athena about how Annabeth’s been talking in her sleep about Kronos. The two children of Athena dismiss it as nightmares, but Thalia knows better.

_ Not Annabeth. Not Annabeth _ .

Thalia ends up following Annabeth, Grover, and Percy on their quest to find her father’s lightning bolt, all plans to visit Jason vanished.

* * *

She keeps getting heart attacks on this stupid quest of theirs. Her body is only twenty-two years old, it should  _ not _ be able to have heart attacks as regularly as it seems to be having them.

Like, had Percy done a spectacularly stupid swan dive from the Saint Louis Arch the  _ first _ time, or was this the result of her meddling in time producing unexpected consequences?

She doesn’t know and she doesn’t particularly care, but seeing Percy up and alive brings sweet relief, even if she’s forgotten how irritating he could be.

The Thrill Ride of Love is  _ wonderful _ . Annabeth had conveniently left the details of that little adventure out when she’d told Thalia what she had missed when she was a tree. All she’d mentioned was the spiders.

She keeps following them along, subtly trying to help out when she thinks they’ll need it, and promises herself she’ll peel off by the time they get to the Underworld, because there is no chance Thalia is going to escape Hades’ notice when she’s blatantly standing in his domain. She figures she’ll just have to hope that Annabeth won’t push Percy into Tartarus or something for the sake of the Poseidon/Athena blood feud that Annabeth seems intent on keeping alive.

The kids end up inside a zoo truck, and Thalia ends up clinging to the roof, staring through a skylight, and wrapping the mist around herself so that nobody notices her. She  _ isn’t _ eavesdropping, though. She  _ isn’t _ . She’s just… making sure the zebra doesn’t go feral, escape its cage, and attack the tiny twelve year old children.

She listens to Annabeth’s description of what happened the night that Luke had died, and is only a  _ little _ insulted by Annabeth’s description of it as “Thalia came running out of the trees, yelling about some delusional monster who looked like her who murdered Luke and insisted it was because the gods asked her to”.

In hindsight, there were definitely better ways that the elder Thalia could have handled it, but in her defense, she had been exhausted and covered in blood. She still should’ve gotten somewhere better hidden, that night. She’d gotten sloppy, without her goddess more or less constantly there to intervene on her behalf.

The kids enter the Lotus Hotel, and Thalia  _ knows _ , since she’s heard the story from Percy, Grover, Annabeth, and Bianca, that if she goes in, the chances of her leaving the place in time to kill Kronos before he finds a new host are nil. She takes the time to go check up on Jason. Unlike her cousins, Thalia is perfectly capable of bluffing her way onto an airplane without Zeus noticing and/or blowing his top.

Jason appears to be fine- he’s really making a name for himself in New Rome- so Thalia stops following him around after a few days and returns to Vegas to keep stalking/saving Percy, Annabeth, and Grover.

Everyone survives the Underworld, somehow. Percy fights Ares, and Thalia is watching with her heart in her throat. She knows Percy is supposed to survive this, though he’s also supposed to end up cursed by Ares during this. Something about his blade failing him.

Still, she can’t exactly interfere here, if she wants to stay unnoticed. Ares isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but he knows what a demigod’s presence feels like.

The intrepid trio decides to fly home, and Thalia decides that she should catch a different flight, especially since Zeus will be watching this one like a hawk, and she’d rather keep her anonymity, thanks. She’s only a little bit jealous of Nico’s ability to shadow-travel at a moment’s notice.

By the time Thalia gets back to camp, all she wants to do is check up on Annabeth and then maybe start wandering the world like a deranged nomad. She catches sight of Percy and Annabeth heading into the woods together, and just for the fun of it, Thalia follows.

Hidden in the trees, Thalia can’t quite stifle her gasp when a scorpion crawls out of Annabeth’s sleeve and attacks Percy.

_ No _ , she thinks, stunned, as Annabeth leaves, her now-useless Yankees cap abandoned on the ground next to Percy.  _ No, I killed Luke- how can  _ Annabeth _ be the one to follow Kronos? _

She jumps down from her tree and kneels next to Percy. “Percy? No, no, no. Percy? Hey. Hey.” She shakes him a little.

Percy does not respond.

Thalia is struck by how  _ young _ he looks. She knows, intellectually, that he’s only twelve years old, but now she’s really  _ seeing _ that Percy Jackson is barely a decade old, and she has over ninety decades under her belt, despite only looking twenty-two.

She grabs Percy by the hands and summons the winds to help her cart Percy along on an invisible wave. She pulls him along, buffeted by the winds, until they reach the edge of the woods, where she hesitates.

She can’t exactly just stroll into camp with Percy. She’s supposed to be dead, and Chiron would never believe  _ Annabeth _ had been the one to poison him when there’s a convenient scapegoat in the form of a too old, too powerful, supposed-to-be-dead Thalia Grace.

And as much as her younger self would delight in it, she can’t, say, toss Percy into camp via the wind. While it would be entertaining to see Percy just flop into the volleyball pits or something, it would also damage the poor boy beyond repair, and the whole point of Thalia’s quest in the past was to stop people from damaging her friends beyond repair.

So she does the most eye-catching thing she can think of, and sets Percy to the side so he doesn’t get fried. He has enough problems already. Then, she raises her hands and summons lightning.

Summoning lightning had been a trick that always came naturally to Thalia. While controlling the winds had only happened after several decades and Jason’s ghost patiently walking her through it, courtesy of Nico and occasionally Hazel, controlling  _ lighting _ had been a trick she’d had down pat by the time she became a Hunter.

She retreats back to the trees after her little lightning show, listening to the shouts and the thumps of Chiron’s hooves galloping towards Percy. She just hopes that Chiron doesn’t trample all over Percy, and tries to keep herself as hidden as possible. It’s easy to hide in the trees, as it always is- setting aside the fact that she’s been living in the woods for centuries, the dryads had always liked her.

But after all  _ that _ , there’s no way Thalia’s going to abandon Camp Half Blood. Jason will have to, unfortunately, wait. There’s a more immediate problem at hand.

If she stays at camp, she can be there for the inevitable clashing whenever Annabeth and Kronos attack. She can make sure everyone she loves stays alive.

She couldn’t follow Annabeth, anyway. If she’s the only agent of Kronos who’s free of camp and Chiron’s watchful eyes, Annabeth will probably be doing most of Kronos’ dirty work. Kronos will be paying attention to his minion and her surroundings. He would easily notice a child of the Big Three following her around, especially now that Percy isn’t helping to mask her scent anymore.

She has to stay at camp. It’s the only way she can think of.

* * *

The pure anger Thalia can see on the faces of the dryads as they find out that her younger-slash-tree self is poisoned is kind of heartwarming. It was a little strange that they’d just accepted Tree Thalia as one of their own, but the fury on their green faces is unmistakable. As a Hunter, Thalia had always been the best at sneaking around in the trees, and now she wonders if that was because of her years spent among them.

But who had poisoned her? Annabeth was nowhere near camp. Luke was dead. Did Kronos have other allies?

_ Silena _ . Had she been allied with Kronos this early? Did it matter? Annabeth wouldn’t have been caught dead helping Kronos the first time around, and she seems to be set on following Luke’s footsteps in this timeline.

Thalia grins. There were advantages to looking exactly like her younger self would have looked if she hadn’t been turned into a tree. Give or take a year, anyway.

She hides under Silena’s bed until nightfall, and then, with her eyes glowing and lightning held in the palms of her hands, Thalia crawls out from under the bed, summons the winds, and hovers over Silena’s sleeping form, face down.

Silena screams when she wakes up, but Thalia’s gotten  _ very _ good at manipulating the Mist. Nobody stirs.

“This is a dream,” Thalia says.

“Aargh,” Silena says, but doesn’t question it. Three cheers for unusually vivid demigod dreams.

“My name is Thalia Grace,” Thalia says. “You poisoned me.”

Silena’s eyes are wide. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry-”

Hooray. A confession. “The Ghost King gave me the chance to return to the world of the living and ensure that you set things right,” Thalia says.

“Yes ma’am!” Silena says, because the poor kid is, like, thirteen and doesn’t know that the Ghost King has no idea Thalia exists and is probably playing Mythomagic in the Lotus Casino right now.

“Heal the tree,” Thalia orders.

“Yes ma’am!”

“Keep Annabeth from continuing to follow Kronos.”

“Yes ma’am!”  
“You stop following Kronos, too. Follow the gods.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Thalia has to hold back a grin. “I’ll be in touch,” she lies, and uses the Mist to obscure herself from Silena’s sight. She crawls back under the bed and pats herself on the back for a job well-done. Above her, she can hear Silena having some sort of panic attack. It’s not like Thalia had  _ threatened _ her- though she can kind of see how floating above someone’s bed with glowing eyes and lightning in her hands might be seen as somewhat threatening.

But still. Silena’s a demigod. Shape up.

* * *

Thalia ends up following Grover on his quest to find Pan. She knows he’s going to end up in the Sea of Monsters with Polyphemus, and if Annabeth really is following in Luke’s footsteps, she should be out there, too.

Not for the first time, Thalia wishes that she could have followed Annabeth.

Thalia has been following Grover faithfully for all of two weeks, trailing him far enough behind that he can’t smell her and using every trick she’s picked up as a Hunter to keep him from noticing her, when she takes a wrong turn and all of a sudden she has no idea where she is, and Grover has vanished.

_ Fantastic _ .

The Sea of Monsters exists to confuse, and since she’s a child of Zeus, the Sea of Monsters is especially hostile to her. Now she’s lost, only days before her younger self is supposed to wake up from her tree coma. Children of Zeus do  _ not _ belong in the ocean.

Thalia wanders the ocean for a few days, trying to stay in the air as long as she possibly can, and then she makes the colossal mistake of spotting an iron ship in the distance and allowing herself to be seen in return before she can hide in the clouds.

In her defense, she’s severely dehydrated and has been fighting off harpies day and night since she’d entered the Bermuda Triangle. She isn’t thinking straight. But  _ gods _ , she should have been smarter than this.

She manages to dodge the Celestial Bronze coated cannonballs, and vows to stay out of sight after that. At least she’s managed to find the people she’s been trying to find. It looked like Percy, Clarisse, Tyson, and, in an odd twist of fate,  _ Silena _ were on that boat. Thalia was pretty sure Silena hadn’t been on Clarisse’s quest the first time, but maybe Thalia’s midnight visit had scared Silena more than she’d thought it had. Or maybe Annabeth had left Silena out of her retelling of her second quest.

Following them quickly proves to be exhausting. She can’t land, because, well, she’s in the middle of the  _ ocean _ , and since she can’t land, she can’t sleep. She’s surviving off of ambrosia and nectar, and even the food of the gods can’t keep away her hunger forever.

She is definitely, seriously, considering landing and just collapsing on their deck. Who cares if they stab her in her sleep? The fact that she bleeds red, not gold, sand, or not at all, should prove that she’s alive and at least half human.

She’s just so  _ tired _ , both mentally and physically.

She jolts awake when the boat is attacked by Scylla and Charybdis. The boat sinks, and so do Clarisse, Tyson, and Silena.

Cursing wildly to herself, Thalia flies after Percy, who’s now clinging to a wooden barrel like he’s forgotten that he’s the Son of Poseidon and is currently surrounded by the largest source of his power in the world.

He washes up on CC’s Spa and Resort, and Thalia is so distracted by the fact that the person who saved Percy was  _ Hylla _ , of all people, that she completely forgets who CC until it’s too late and Percy is a squeaking guinea pig in a pile of clothing and a Camp Half-Blood necklace.

_ Why do I have to do everything myself? _ Thalia wonders, exasperated.

As soon as Circe leaves the room to contact some kindergarten teacher in Jersey- and really, the fact that it’s  _ Jersey _ is probably more offensive to Percy than the whole  _ transformed into an animal against his will _ thing- Thalia makes her move, and hopes to all the gods that he’ll be too disoriented to remember her face.

Thalia looks into the cage, and realizes she has no idea which guinea pig is Percy. Oh, well. How had Annabeth said she’d reversed the magic…? Oh, yeah.

Thalia kneels and rifles through Percy’s clothes until she finds the magic multivitamins. She counts out the amount of guinea pigs in the cage, and puts the corresponding amount of vitamins in there. Then she stuffs the magic multivitamins in her backpack and books it before Percy can get his wits about him long enough to think to memorize his helper’s face.

She takes back to the skies, and silently thanks Zeus that she’d managed to master the winds in her nine hundred years of life.

* * *

Everything is going surprisingly smoothly, despite the lack of Annabeth and the addition of Silena to the quest. Everyone ends up on Polyphemus’ island, and everyone survives the encounter with the Cyclops. Thalia can’t risk getting too close to Polyphemus- he’s a powerful monster, a direct descendant of Poseidon, and he can definitely tell the difference between another child of Poseidon and an interloping child of Zeus.

She wishes that she could have something like Annabeth’s now-useless Yankees cap. It would have been so useful.

She follows the questers faithfully as they make their way back to US shores, killing any water-based monster stupid enough to try to attack a group of demigods that included  _ two _ sons of Poseidon.

They make it to shore safely, and Clarisse grudgingly gives up a drachma to Iris-Message camp to let Mr. D know that they had survived, gotten the Fleece, and were on their way home.

And that was when they hit a snag, in the form of Silena Beauregard’s guilty conscience.

“Don’t dismiss the Iris Message yet,” Silena says. “Chiron’s innocent.”

Percy, Tyson, and Clarisse turn to look at her. “Well, yeah,” Percy says.

“How do you know?” Clarisse asks warily.

“Because  _ I _ poisoned Thalia’s tree,” Silena says. 

Percy and Clarisse’s eyes widen.

“I’m sorry,” Silena continues. “Chiron’s innocent. It was me.”

There’s a beat of silence while everyone processes that, and then Mr. D says, in an upbeat tone, “Well! We will have no more need of  _ you _ , than, Tantalus,” and Tantalus is banished back to Tartarus without so much as a donut to remember the mortal plane by.

* * *

The little procession up the hill to drape the Golden Fleece over the tree Thalia’s branches is solemn, but is moving with all the urgency that a dying magical tree requires.

Thalia- the human Thalia- is sitting in the tree Thalia’s branches, one hand resting against the trunk, eyes staring down at the place where she had died and been revived from her life as a tree.

Clarisse puts the fleece on Thalia’s tree self, and Thalia can  _ feel _ the sighs of relief that the trees around her breathe out. The world feels brighter, somehow, and the air is richer, like Thalia can finally take a deep breath again after months of shallow breathing.

Then the world  _ changes _ , and Thalia knows that her younger self has returned to the world. The gasps from the young campers and Chiron only confirm that.

“Who are you?” Percy asks, and Thalia can’t help but feel a little relieved that he doesn’t recognize her. He must not have gotten a good look at her face while he was a guinea pig- or if he had, he didn’t remember it.

“My name is Thalia,” Thalia’s younger self says, staring around the clearing. “Daughter of Zeus.” Her eyes land on Grover. “Where’s Annabeth?”

The answer, predictably, does not please Thalia’s younger self, which Thalia completely understands. Her younger self ends up huddled in the Zeus Cabin, shell shocked, with her arms wrapped around her legs.

The elder Thalia, hovering in the shadows of the Zeus Cabin, remembers that night. She’d finally gotten to safety, after years of hovering in limbo just outside of the only safe haven she knew about at the time, only to be told that six years had passed and her best friend, who she’d died for, was an agent of the gods’ worst enemy. 

It can only be worse for her younger self right now- her best friend is dead and the kid she’d protected with her life was running around doing Kronos’ dirty work. At least in the original timeline, Annabeth had been okay- even if the two of them hadn’t quite known how to connect anymore.

The younger Thalia stays at camp for two weeks before finally deciding to leave camp.

The elder Thalia follows her, more out of curiosity than anything. Her younger self’s scent should cover up her own. Are they going to the Romans? The Hunters?

As it turns out, they are not.

They’re going to Annabeth, who’s hiding out in a little apartment in Queens.

Thalia can feel her heart dropping as she watches Annabeth’s eyes go wide at the sight of the younger Thalia, alive and well.

“ _ Thalia _ ,” Annabeth says, teary-eyed. “You’re alive.”

The younger Thalia nods. “The Fleece saved me. Grover and Chiron told me what happened to you.”

Annabeth’s eyes go hard. “If you’re here to convince me to go back to camp-”

“Gods, no,” the younger Thalia says. “I’m here to join you.”

“ _ What _ ?” Annabeth says. “Really? Why?”

“The gods,” the younger Thalia says, “kind of failed us.”

Annabeth nods, looking a little bemused. “Yeah,” she says. “You and Luke died. Hundreds of unclaimed demigods die in monster attacks because they don’t know how to fight. We have to fix this. The gods don’t care, but  _ he _ does.” Her speech sounds rehearsed. To be fair, it must be hard to conjure up non-rehearsed words when confronted with a supposed-to-be-dead fifteen year old.

“I’m joining you,” the younger Thalia says. Her voice is hard. “For Luke and for Jason.”

_ Oh, no _ , Thalia thinks, horrified.  _ She doesn’t know Jason’s alive _ .

“Jason?” Annabeth asks.

The younger Thalia waves her hand. “My little brother,” she says in a pained voice. “I think Hera killed him. He was three.”

There’s fire in Annabeth’s eyes, now. “You’ll be the child of the prophecy,” she says, and her words have the weight of a Titan behind them. “We’ll destroy Olympus and the gods.”

The younger Thalia nods, and smiles. “We have six months until my sixteenth birthday. We’ll need an army.”

Annabeth grins back at the younger Thalia. “We’ll be ready.”

The elder Thalia clings to the ceiling, the Mist wrapped around her, and thinks,  _ I have made a huge mistake _ .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What did you think?


	3. Mistakes Acknowledged and Prophecies Fulfilled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thalia scrambles to fix this timeline and prove to herself that she made the right choice.

At least with her younger self hanging out with Annabeth, Thalia can keep an eye on them. As the weeks go on, she alternates between keeping an eye on the two of them and going to Camp Half-Blood, where she leaves anonymous notes to update them on Kronos’ plans. 

She doesn’t know what good leaving the notes actually does. Nobody can recognize her handwriting, which is probably a good thing, considering her younger self’s newfound loyalties. The campers have no way of knowing if the notes are written by someone with actual inside knowledge of Kronos’ machinations, or if someone is trying to mislead them. There’s lots of arguments over the Ping-Pong table about it.

But since the younger version of Thalia is approaching sixteen quickly, with no intentions to join the Hunt and stave off the war, most of Camp Half-Blood is preparing for war.

Thalia follows Grover to Westover High and the DiAngelos, and is relieved when she sees both of them, alive and well. Seeing Bianca again is more painful than seeing Nico again, because while she did know Nico better than Bianca, Nico had also died at a ripe old age with Will Solace by his side. Bianca, though, was due to die by the end of the week.

She has to leave as soon as Artemis appears on-scene. The combined child-of-Hades scent of the DiAngelos and the child-of-Poseidon scent from Percy had hidden her child-of-Zeus scent from Dr. Thorn and Grover, but she couldn’t hide from the direct attention of a goddess- especially as an ex-Hunter.

Artemis is kidnapped, as she was before. In the absence of Annabeth, a Hunter named Chloe falls from the cliff and is, presumably, taken to Mount Tam. Thalia watches this unfold, pain in her heart as she watches her sisters mourn and try to figure out what to do next.

As before, the Oracle gives the prophecy to Percy and Zoë, in the same words as before.  _ How has my presence not messed up a prophecy before _ ? Thalia wonders, and keeps to the shadows, trusting that Bianca and Nico are inexperienced enough that they can’t sense a person hiding in their element.

Without Thalia’s younger self to volunteer for the quest, Percy gets to go along, though not without a lot of grumbling from Zoë. Phoebe ends up bedridden again, and Thalia does her best to follow the group as subtly as possible. 

She follows them in the clouds, as usual, and realizes dimly that she and Percy have reversed places- now she is the one flying along, following Zoë’s erratic driving, while Percy is the one in the car, probably clinging to the oh-shit handle for dear life and demanding to know who taught Zoë to drive.

They get to the Smithsonian without anyone dying, somehow. Percy wanders off from the group with Grover, grumbling about Zoë’s constant side-eying Percy and sniffing condescendingly whenever he speaks up. 

The two of them end up watching Annabeth raise the dead. Apparently, Thalia’s younger self was currently at Mount Tam, keeping an eye on their kidnapped goddess.

Percy and Grover end up earning the wrath of the Nemean Lion and the animated skeletons- and it’s been  _ centuries _ since Thalia’s had to actually fight these, thanks to Nico, so she’s awfully out of practice.

Percy defeats the Lion with the power of freeze-dried ice cream and a “lucky” lightning strike. Unfortunately, the “luckiness” of the lightning fools exactly one person, and that person is Bianca DiAngelo, who has never met a child of Zeus before. Grover looks suspiciously suspicious, and he’s taking deep breaths in through his nose.

Then his eyes widen, and he looks up to where Thalia is watching them. He shouts, and Thalia makes the executive decision to wrap the Mist around herself and book it.

She resolves not to follow them so closely after that. Besides, Apollo should be showing up soon. Thalia can only hope that he hasn’t been watching the quest so closely that he’s noticed the abnormal amount of Thalia Graces running around.

She catches back up to the questers in the Junkyard of the Gods, after Ares and Aphrodite leave. This is it. This is her first chance to see if she can save someone and make the world better, rather than worse.

_ One shall be lost in the land without rain _ .

“Give this to Nico for me,” Bianca says, and Thalia makes her move.

She swoops in, literally, from the clouds, and knocks Bianca to the ground, stealing her bow and some arrows as she does. Before Percy can react, Thalia takes off again, lightning wreathing around her arms and an arrow already nocked in her bow.

She takes a breath, and lets the arrow go. At the same time, she sends a bolt of lightning after it.

The combined attack rips a hole in the front of Talos’ chest. Taking another quick breath, she dives down into the metal monster and down to its foot, where she knows there is a control panel. Bianca died for that control panel. It has to be here.

She finds it.

She shuts it down.

Talos falls flat on its face, effectively trapping her inside.

“Oh, gods. Was that  _ Thalia _ ?” she can dimly hear Grover ask.

Thalia processes the consequences of her actions, and feels a weight pressing down on her chest.  _ Whoops _ , she thinks, and loses consciousness.

* * *

Thalia wakes up in darkness, and genuinely thinks that she’s managed to kill herself for a moment. Then she realizes that she’s still breathing, and really, there’s only so much breathing that a dead woman can do.

She hauls herself to her knees, muscles aching. If she’s really taken Bianca’s place in the prophecy, then she’s been “lost” in the land without rain. That  _ probably _ means that she can’t interfere in the quest anymore.

They’d survived before. They’d be fine.

Though, last time, they had had an experienced child of Zeus on their side, rather than a brand-new child of Hades, and their opponents had been a Titan and a group of crazed demigods, rather than a Titan and a group of crazed demigods led by a child of Athena and a child of Zeus on the cusp of her sixteenth birthday.

In hindsight, this was not her greatest plan, though she maintains that her “kill Luke and accidentally turn Annabeth to the Dark Side” plan is still the worst plan she’s thought of so far. In her defense, she’s trying very hard to fix it.

She figures that she’s still inside the Talos statue. The thing must have fallen at an angle that made it impossible for the other four demigods to drag her out, but allowed air inside so she didn’t die (again). Somehow, she had trouble believing that Zeus would save her a second time.

With some well-applied wind control, Thalia manages to levitate the Talos statue off of herself and breathes in the cool night air. How long has she been unconscious?

With a regretful look in the direction she knew the others had gone, Thalia turned and flew away to see what her younger self and Annabeth were up to.

* * *

The answer, apparently, was recruiting.

Thalia’s sixteenth birthday was in a matter of hours, and the idea of fighting on the same side as the prophesied hero probably seemed like a great idea to most demigods, especially the ones who had been rejected by their godly parent.

Not for the first time, Thalia regrets what she’s done.

She considers just time traveling away to fix her mistakes, but stops herself. She’s saved Bianca. That was proof that she really could do good, that she could change the timeline for the better.

Though, Thalia reflects as she watches her younger self running off to California to ask for her mother’s blessing to become invulnerable, become Kronos’ host, and eventually head to Mount Tam to check up on Artemis, maybe the phrase “changing the timeline for the better” wasn’t the best choice of words.

She would stay until Kronos rose, she decides. Maybe she can still salvage something out of this disaster of a timeline.

* * *

The battle on Mount Tam occurs one day late, on Thalia’s sixteenth birthday, which is, in and of itself, a victory for Kronos.

Thalia is pretty sure that she won’t be able to interfere in the battle, though, especially since her younger self, Percy, Bianca, Artemis, and Atlas are there, too. All of the Olympians are focused on this battle. There’s no way she can hide here.

To be honest, she expects Zeus to show up.  _ One shall perish at a parent’s hand _ \- he would be guaranteed victory! It would be the perfect time to get rid of the biggest threat to Olympus since the Ophiotaurus.

Instead, as before, Zoë dies at Atlas’ hand, and everyone else gets away with mild-to-moderate injuries.

Artemis has been rescued.

Chloe has been rescued.

Bianca survived the quest.

But Thalia’s younger self has turned sixteen, and the Great Prophecy has begun.

* * *

Pan calls Grover to him, but, well, the war has begun. Grover is devoted to his patron god, but he can’t leave camp and the war preparations. The talk around the Ping-Pong table is no doubt grim.

Thalia, for her part, lurks in the words most of the time, next to Zeus’ Fist. She’s sent an anonymous message to Chiron about the location of the Labyrinth, but, as always, her message is (rightfully) regarded with suspicion.

Her younger self attacks in July, armed with Aegis, a spear, golden eyes, and the wrath of a Titan in her head. It’s no longer accurate to consider her Thalia’s younger self- she has allowed Kronos to take over. Hypnos fights alongside her, sending campers to sleep. Annabeth fights, too, a blonde demon with the knife that Luke had given her so long ago.

In the panic, Thalia wraps the Mist around herself and sends an Iris Message to Camp Jupiter, the Hunters, and the magicians in Brooklyn, even though two of those groups have no idea that Greek gods exist.

She knows they won’t get there in time. The Hunters might- she doesn’t know if Bianca’s any good at shadow travel yet- but without those extra reinforcements, Thaila isn’t hopeful about their chances.

She takes to the battlefield, and the looks of absolute confusion on everyone’s faces would be hilarious if the situation weren’t so deadly. She wields lightning with deadly accuracy, flying above the battlefield, untouchable by any of the demigods down below- all of whom are trying to kill her, for the record, since she looks exactly like the woman possessed by Kronos, while also trying to kill the real Kronos. Maybe keeping her presence in this timeline secret wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Next time, Thalia vows, she’ll do things differently. Maybe get Luke some therapy. Maybe just cut out the middleman and kill all the gods herself.

She aims a lightning bolt at the Minotaur and it dissolves into sand. At least the Doors of Death weren’t an issue at this point in the timeline. 

The battlefield underneath her is distant noise. She’s vaguely aware that there are demigods underneath her, fighting and dying for the protection of the very same camp that she had once fought and (almost) died for.

She considers her choices. If she goes back in time again, if she decides to erase the mistakes she’d made, could she do it better? She had the benefit of hindsight twice over, now. Would it be enough?

Below her, she watches disinterestedly as some moron tries to challenge Percy right next to the Long Island Sound. She sends a lightning bolt at a phalanx of demigods who are charging the Apollo cabin.

But if she stayed, she would be able to help the demigods of Camp Half Blood win the battle- and clear up the confusion of whether or not she was a shapeshifting monster. Besides, if anyone could defeat Kronos, it would be his host body. That was what had happened in the original timeline. If she could bait her younger self into fighting her, one-on-one…

And then what? Thalia wasn’t dumb enough to think she could overpower a  _ Titan _ . The only one who could truly defeat Kronos would be her younger self, and unlike Luke, her younger self was not fighting against any loved ones who might be able to stop her.

If only she could get Jason to camp.  _ That _ might stop her younger self before Kronos could take over permanently. If nothing else, it would confuse the Hades out of her younger self.

She aims a lightning bolt at a monster who’s going for Nico. She’ll be damned if she just lets Nico die only months after saving his sister. Also, he’s been following Will Solace and Percy around like some kind of deadly puppy. She can’t cut that love story short.

Maybe she could just yell that Jason was alive at her younger self. It was the only solace she could think of to give her. Luke really was dead. Zeus really didn’t care about her beyond her  _ half-blood of the eldest gods _ status. The parents of most demigods were actively indifferent when it came to their mortal children, except, possibly, for Poseidon.

Of course, there was no way her younger self would believe that Jason was alive without proof, and Thalia was a little short on little brothers at the moment.

Maybe, if she could get in close enough, she could explain her plan to Percy so she could get a rainbow and Iris-Message Jason..? The spray of mist that had provided a rainbow earlier was long gone, and there was no way she could lure her younger self there anyway- it was too close to Poseidon’s realm for anyone not fighting on Percy Jackson’s side.

She risks a look down at Percy, who, as he had in the original timeline, looked absolutely terrifying whenever he fought. He’d probably stab her without a second thought if she tried to talk to him.

Okay, so no Iris-Messaging, then.

She can hear her younger self screaming in anger and pain, and looks down to see herself, her face contorted in rage as her eyes glow gold.

There’s a bright flash of light, and suddenly the air is heavy with power.

Kronos rises to his feet, and Thalia knows that her younger self is dead. Next to Kronos, Annabeth looks stoic, unshed tears brimming in her eyes as she glares at the demigods opposing Kronos. Not even Thalia’s death is enough to turn her back to the side of good.

_ It’s time _ , Thalia thinks, looking down at the battlefield.  _ There’s no way I can fix this _ .

She can feel her heart growing heavy as she sends another bolt towards Kronos’ army, then another at Kronos himself. 

Kronos looks up at her, and his eyes light up. Thalia watches as her own face twists into an inhuman smile, and Kronos starts to rise up to meet her.

Thalia flips him off, grabs the time machine in her backpack, and turns back time.

She vanishes, leaving the warring demigods to fight and die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What did you think?
> 
> The next and final chapter will be up on August 16!


	4. Saving the World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thalia goes back to the night she killed Luke.
> 
> Tags have been updated!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Thalia we've been following for the past few chapters is "Two".

Thalia reappears in a tree branch nearby her looks-like-she’s-sixteen year old self, who is currently watching Luke like a hawk, ready to make her move and doom Olympus. Her “sixteen” year old self notices that someone is behind her immediately, because her “sixteen” year old self is more observant than their genuinely-fifteen year old self, who still has no idea that there are two time traveling versions of her hiding in the trees above her.

_ Don’t kill Luke _ , the oldest Thalia, who looks to be twenty-five, mouths. It’s eerie, to be talking to another version of herself after years of staying hidden and out of the way.

The “sixteen” year old Thalia frowns.  _ Why? _ she mouths back.

_ Everything’s going to go wrong _ . Thalia gestures for her other self to follow her. The two of them take to the skies, and the older Thalia leads the way deeper into the forest. Once they’re far enough away that there’s no chance of anyone stumbling across them, they land.

“Something goes wrong, doesn’t it?” the “sixteen” year old Thalia says.

“Yeah,” the “twenty-five” year old Thalia says. “I killed Luke, but our youngest self saw it.”

“Oh. Did she see  _ you _ ?”

“Yeah. Things got  _ ugly _ .”

“What happened?”

“Annabeth became Kronos’ right hand woman and the younger version of us became Kronos. They destroyed Olympus in Luke’s name… and Jason’s.”

The younger Thalia winced. “So, no killing Luke.”

“Nope.”

“What  _ can _ we do, then?”

Thalia thinks for a moment. “Therapy?” she suggests. “Maybe we could try talking to Luke.”

“If he doesn’t become Kronos, someone else will,” her younger self points out. “What we should do is team up and try to destroy Kronos himself, once and for all. Either before or after Luke is possessed by him, I don’t care which.”

“Would that work?” Thalia wonders. “He’s a Titan. It only worked the first time around because he was totally mortal in that one spot.”

“If it doesn’t, we can just try again.”

“What if one of us dies?”

“Then the other comes back. If both of us die, it doesn’t matter. Everything will happen the same way it did in the original timeline.”

Thalia thinks for a moment. “So, we’d fake our way down to the Underworld and go to Tartarus to kill Kronos?”

“We could go to Greece and take the, ah, one-way trip via Arachne Express.”

Thalia nods. “That could work. Think we should go now or…?”

“Sooner is better than later.”

The two Thalias stood, and were immediately interrupted by a new complication.

“Sorry,” a new voice calls, “but that didn’t work.”

Thalia summons lightning and prepares to set it free. “Who’s there?”

The younger Thalia reaches for a bow that is no longer strapped across her back. “Show yourself!”

Another version of Thalia stepped out of the trees. She looked like she’d been through hell, with dark circles around her eyes and her jacket scorched. “It didn’t work,” she repeated. “I tried that, it didn’t work, we need to come up with new ideas.”

“Oh,” Thalia says, staring at the other version of her. This version looks to be about the same age as her “sixteen” year old self.

“Oh,” the first Thalia says. “Okay.”

The three of them are silent for a moment.

“We could tell the gods everything?” the first Thalia suggests.

Thalia and the third Thalia snort in unison. “They wouldn’t do anything,” Thalia says. “I’m no traitor to Olympus, but when it comes to planning, the gods are useless at best and malicious at worst.”

“We could tell our younger self about Jason?” the third Thalia suggests hopelessly.

“She’s probably already a tree by this point,” the first Thalia said. “Or nearing that point, anyway.”

There’s another long beat of silence.

“We could just let things happen the same way they did,” the third Thalia says.

“No,” the other two say simultaneously.

“We could just run around saving everyone who dies,” Thalia says.

“That wouldn’t solve the Kronos problem,” the first Thalia says.

“But we’d have more allies,” Thalia says. “Say we bring Bianca into the fold. Who knows what we could do then?”

“Nothing, because then there would be four extremely powerful demigods in one spot,” the third Thalia says. “We’d be overrun in hours. Only reason we aren’t right now is because the monsters are hunting our younger self.”

“We could tell Artemis,” the first Thalia suggests.

“She wouldn’t be able to do anything,” Thalia says.

“We could tell Luke,” the first Thalia says.

Everyone considered that for a moment.

“Yeah. Yeah, let’s tell him. Let’s just destroy the timeline,” the third Thalia says. “If we tell Camp Half Blood everything, then they’ll know what’s going to happen.”

“Or we’ll alienate everyone to Luke and he’ll have even more reasons to go to Kronos,” Thalia says.

The third Thalia shrugs. “That’s not a guarantee.”

Thalia stands. “All right. We can do it over if it goes wrong. Let’s do it.” She turns to the youngest Thalia in the clearing. “You want to tell them?”

The first Thalia stands, too. “Why not?”

“That won’t work either,” a familiar voice calls out.

The three Thalias spin around in the direction of the voice, and a fourth Thalia strolls out of the trees.

“Oh, you've got to be kidding me,” the second Thalia says.

“Oh my  _ gods _ ,” the youngest/first Thalia says. “How many times do we fail?”

“Sorry,” the third Thalia says.

The “twenty-five” year old/second Thalia rubs her forehead. “Let’s number ourselves, it’ll be easier- especially if there’s going to be more of us coming.”

The others agree, and the youngest Thalia in the clearing becomes One. The Thalia who had killed Luke becomes Two, the Thalia who had tried to kill Kronos in Tartarus becomes Three, and the Thalia who had told her younger self about the future becomes Four. By mutual agreement, the absolute youngest Thalia- the one who still thought Luke was her friend and hadn’t been transformed into a tree yet- was still going to be called Zero.

As it turned out, the number system became important, because after the fourth Thalia made her appearance, more and more Thalias start entering the clearing.

“Gods,” the one hundred and thirty sixth Thalia says as she enters the Thalia-infested woods. “Nothing  _ works _ .”

“We’ll find a way,” Ninety-Eight says grimly.

“How many of us  _ are there _ ?” Forty-Seven demands.

Two puts her head in her hands.  _ One was right. How many times do we fail _ ?

They stay in the woods for a few weeks, trying to think of ways to stop Kronos, even as more and more Thalias come back in time. They set up a system of sending one group of Thalias out to get food and water, while a second group patrols the forest, keenly aware that their combined scents as children of Zeus means that they should be overrun by monsters. A third group of Thalias sits and rests, trying to think of a way to fix everything.

In Two’s opinion, the only way to fix everything was to just let everything play out as they had, because while people  _ had _ died, Kronos wasn’t ruling the world.

And then someone- Two can’t be bothered to read their name tag with their number on it at the moment- says, “What about the Lethe?”

Another Thalia- Eighteen, Two thinks- stumbles into the clearing. “Other mes,” she cries. “Other mes! Remember how Percy defeated Iapetus?”

“Oh my  _ gods _ ,” One-Twenty-Nine says.

The Thalias in the clearing wait with baited breath to see if a two hundred and sixty third Thalia would appear, declaring the idea undoable.

No Thalias appeared.

Multiple Thalias start cheering.

“I call punching Kronos in the face!” One-Hundred-And-Ninety-Nine shouts.

“Let’s go,” Eleven says. She pulls out her time machine. “Ambush him right after Luke became invulnerable, when he’s in the Underworld. He can’t fight all two hundred and sixty two of us.”

The Thalias grin identical grins at each other, and they’re off.

* * *

They end up voting on whether or not they should involve Camp Half Blood, and when the majority vote  _ yes _ , mostly for the firepower they could provide, Thalia Number Two Hundred And Sixty Two is nominated to tell Camp Half Blood what’s been going on, reasoning that she looks a lot older than Thaila Number Zero does and knows all the ways that defeating Kronos could go wrong.

The remaining two hundred and sixty one Thalias hide in the trees, waiting for Two-Hundred-And-Sixty-Two to give them the go-ahead. At one point, Two manages to spot a glint of silver in the distance.

“They called Zero and the Hunters,” Two reports, letting the wind carry her voice to the others. 

Nearby, Eighty-One gives her a thumbs-up. “Artemis is probably busy with the other gods right now, so we’re still hidden,” she said.

“Not for long. We’ll probably be called in, soon,” Two-Hundred-And-Forty says tersely.

“I can’t wait to see their faces,” Thirteen said with a grin.

They’re quiet for a while more, and then Ninety-Five says, “I see orange and silver.”

The campers and Hunters come up to them. There must be hundreds of them, all following Two-Hundred-And-Sixty-Two, who’s practically swaggering.

As soon as Two-Hundred-And-Sixty-Two gives them the signal, Two drops down from her tree, along with all the other Thalias, much to the shock of the Hunters and campers who had looked skeptical.

“ _ Oh _ ,” Zero says, looking nonplussed. “Wow.”

“I  _ told _ you,” Two-Hundred-And-Sixty-Two said. “You’re going to need a name tag..”

Percy, who’s standing to Two-Hundred-And-Sixty-Two’s left, nods slowly, eyes roving over all the Thalias. “How many of you  _ are _ there?” he asked, sounding baffled and horrified. “Do you have a plan?”

“Well,” Seventy-Three drawls, shoving her way to the front of the pack of Thalias, “we’ve had a few weeks to think about it. Have you fought Iapetus?”

Percy nods, then pauses. His eyes go wide. “Yes. Wait,  _ no _ . You can’t be serious.”

“You’ve gone insane,” Zero says, sounding almost awed. “There is no way that should work a second time.”

“Let’s put it this way,” Two pipes up. “He is  _ definitely _ not going to be expecting two hundred Thalia Graces to attack him. We’ll have the best element of surprise anyone’s had since the Trojan Horse.”

Nobody can argue with that, so the army of Thalias, Hunters, and demigods march off together to the Underworld to destroy a Titan.

* * *

Considering the sheer amount of experience, manpower, and demigod powers the Thalias, the Hunters, and the Greek campers have, it’s almost laughably easy to herd a disoriented, wet Kronos out of the Styx and towards the Lethe. Nevertheless, a lot of demigods- mostly Thalias- die trying to push him into the Lethe.

Two doesn’t care at the moment. Kronos needs to go down, and if the way to do that is to overwhelm him with numbers until he drops, then that’s what they’re going to do.

Eight Thalias manage to drag him with them into the Lethe, and it’s all over.

_ Finally _ .

Percy uses his powers to keep himself dry as he jumps in to drag Kronos and the eight Thalias out of the Lethe, and to dry them off once they’re out of the water. Nico stands to the side, holding Bob’s hand.

“What- what’s happening?” Kronos looks confused and miserable. “Who are you? What’s going on?”

Four Thalias start laughing in glee, earning themselves disapproving looks from the other demigods, Hunters, and Thalias.

“Hey,” Percy says, and drags Kronos’ face over to look at him. “Do you know who you are?”

Kronos blinks. “No?”

“How do you feel about the gods?” Percy demands.

Kronos looks befuddled. “...Gods?”

“Oh, good,” Percy says, and pushes Kronos towards Bob and Nico. “That’s your brother.”

Bob smiles, and Two is immediately reminded of Tyson. She half expects Bob to engulf the newly-amnesiac Kronos in a hug.

“Hang on,” she calls. “The time travelers have a score to settle here. One-Ninety-Nine?”

One-Hundred-And-Ninety-Nine smiles grimly and steps forwards.

One punched face later, Kronos is officially Dealt With, and the campers, Hunters, Bob, and Kronos depart, leaving the Thalias to sort things out between themselves.

“What now?” Nineteen says.

There are shrugs all around from the Thalias.

Zero, though, starts to inch away. “I have a goddess to serve,” she says. “I’ll see you around.”

“Wait!” One calls. “You should know- Jason’s alive. He’s in California- Oakland, I think.”

Zero pauses, disbelief warring with joy in her eyes. “Thanks,” she says finally. “I’ll check it out.”

She leaves.

The remaining Thalias look at each other. Most of them- the higher numbers, mostly- had been cannon fodder. There were only about thirty of them left, including the eight who had ended up in the Lethe and were now standing around, looking politely confused.

“One, you should return your time machine to the Hephaestus twerp,” Twenty-Nine says. “We did make a solemn oath.”

A laugh bubbles from Thalia to Thalia.

“Really, though,” Nineteen says. “What now?”

“Go our separate ways?” Forty-Two suggests.

Sixteen shrugs. “What about Gaea? Actually- what about the amnesiacs?”

Everyone turns to look at the soaking wet Thalias, all of whom turn around like they think there’s another group of amnesiacs behind them.

Two shrugs. “I guess we have the rest of our lives to figure it out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea if that would actually work, but this is fanfiction, so it does.
> 
> Thanks for reading! What did you think?

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think?
> 
> Also, if this fic seems familiar, StopIWantToTalkAboutCheese is also writing a Thalia Grace time travel fanfic. It's called "better remember lightning never strikes twice" and it's great.


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